I’d like to maintain the valuable SEO of this site while making the switch to maxwastler.com, but I have not figured out how to merge allplaidout.com with maxwastler.com, which features the work I have done here at All Plaidout and all my other ventures. For time-being, please find my latest at maxwastler.com. Thank you. – Max

As the 2015 NBA Basketball season gets underway, I wanted to take a moment to recount three of my favorite basketball uniform design stories.

One of the first stories about uniform design I remember reading had something to do with the 1988 debut of the Charlotte Hornets‘ purple pinstripe uniforms. They were designed by Charlotte native, Alexander Julian. With his line, Colours by Alexander Julian, he ably updated the staid men’s suiting routine for then modern times (cue: “This is the nineties.”) by adding splashy patterns and bold color combinations. One such colour — ahem color — for which Mr. Julian is owed a lot of credit: Teal.

Forgive my serious digression. It suffices that there could be an entire post, if not a blog, devoted to teal uniforms. So, Alexander Julian injected teal into sports. He also incorporated a wide-as-clapboard-pinstripe in the befuddlingly unlucky color purple.

He once famously quipped, “When it came out, I felt like I had dropped a teal bomb on Charlotte. There was a new housing development that changed its name to ‘Teal Acres.’ The Park Hotel, which was the best hotel in town, changed its logo to teal. The towels were embroidered in teal. I felt a little like Doctor Frankenstein. I had created a monster. It took off like crazy.”

Love it or hate it, there’s no denying the magnitude of Mr. Julian’s contributions to the way athletes look off but especially on the court.

Sidenote: Tell me I wasn’t the only kid who tore this Converse ad out of SI For Kids and shoved it in his TrapperKeeper.

FLOJO! Look on any “most-stylish athlete” list, and you’re bound to find Florence Griffith Joyner, the track athlete who stormed the courses of the Los Angeles and Seoul Olympics in the 1980s. As famous for her flamboyant nail art and her asymmetrical leggings as she was for her speed, around the time FloJo’s racing career peaked, a tuned-in intern at the Indiana Pacers made note of a Sports Illustratedinterview where FloJo hinted she’d like to try her hand at designing.

Though admittedly far more staid than her one-legged lacy racewear, Knick-killerReggie Miller and the 1990 Indiana Pacers did step onto the courts in bold, asymmetrical uniforms befitting their team’s newfound edginess, thanks in large part to the ball-handling skills of Mr. Miller. Undoubtedly, that edgy flair of FloJo also must have helped.

And finally, the most heart-warming uniform design story in recent years has to do with the work Brooklyn-based Doubleday and Cartwright are doing for the Milwaukee Bucks. A personal design hero of mine, Justin Thomas Kay, a proud Cream City native, was the managing creative director at Doubleday and Cartwrightwhile the firm worked with the Bucks to devise a new logo, new uniforms, and an entirely new design ethos.

What I loved most about this project was how history and childhood were integrated into the design. Milwaukee is known as The Cream City for the color of the bricks made from clay found in Milwaukee and the Menomenee River Valley.

I’m having trouble tracking down the photo, but I recall upon release of this new design seeing a sketch of the lettering above. It was designed using graph paper, the same graph paper on which my friends and I — and assuredly Mr. Kay’s friends — were sketching the logos of the Bucks and Bulls, perfecting the rack of horns or the Bulls’ snout as kids who were obsessed with Detlef and Reggie; and Mugsy and Larry; and Ricky and Alvin; and Scottie and Michael.

By relying upon colors familiar to the woodland Wisconsinites, forest green and cream, with hints of lake water blue, the he uniforms have at once a classic, old world appeal and a decidedly modern look. Kudos to Kay and the team at Doubleday and Cartwright for getting this so very right.

I’m hopeful this NBA season is a good one. Thanks to the Bucks, it certainly looks that way.

My love for the roadside drive-in is well-documented. I first learned of the Weenie Beenie in Arlington, Virginia while watching the Foo Fighters’Sonic Highwayson HBO. And then, I remembered the song. I think it was a track I would skip over to get to hits like “Big Me.” Either way, something compelled me to wake up with the sun and drive to this place in the Foo Fighter’s Dave Grohl’s home town.

A few friends familiar with the place told me to get the half smoke, to go for breakfast, to get a coffee, and to say “hi” to Jamaican John, which I did. But I messed up when ordering, and I forgot to get chili on my half smoke, egg, and cheese sandwich.

When I sat down with my breakfast at one of the picnic tables alongside the restaurant, a group of five or six men were gathered around their styrofoam cups of coffee and dirty backpacks or Igloo coolerssc. One of them, a tall African-American man with a mustache and a pack of Salems said, “I don’t want my picture in no Rolling Stone.” I assured him I was no Annie Leibovitz. He lamented aloud several times, “Man, I just hope I get a job today.” Looking across the street at a gas station’s parking lot where trucks would pull up, and one-by-one, the men sitting at the picnic tables would get picked off, hopping into the passenger side of a truck, an F-150 or a Silverado or a Tacoma, and heading to a job site of one kind or another.

“Man, last week, I loaded up carts of stuff for nine hours every day, all of them going to China.”

As I laid into my half smoke, egg, and cheese, he explained how happy he was to “retire to Louisiana. Gonna put a sign on my door that just says, ‘We gone.’ I gotta get my son through Virginia Tech. He’s in his last year for a Masters in Engineering. Then, I’m done.”

And just as I was enjoying my last bite, he grabbed a grocery bag filled with his lunch, we said our goodbyes and “good lucks,” and with the march of a soldier, he made his way across the street and into the passenger side of a green GMC truck.

I would’ve surely taken this man for granted had it not been for the Weenie Beenie.

Attention, Chicagoans: join me at the Patagonia Magnificent Mile a week from this Wednesday, September 9th, 2015 to celebrate thirty years of the iconic Snap-T pullover. We’ll have live music from one of my favorite musicians (I can’t say more at this point, but know that this will be a super-secret show from an iconic Chicagoan) tasty food provided by Piece Pizza topped with salmon from Patagonia Provisions, and a custom beer made especially for the event by Jared Rouben of Moody Tongue. Finish it all off with some Black Dog Gelato direct from their cart and you’re sure to have a good time. Bring in your old fleece or buy one or several gently used Snap-Ts curated from Patagonia’s Worn Wear collection and receive free customization (new pockets, patches, pouches) and repairs from Patagonia’s very own tailor, Alexis Fournier who is flying in from New York City especially for the party.

I encourage you to share my invitation with your friends. Please RSVP to let us know you’re coming. And I’d love it if you’d be so kind as to share with your friends and followers that you’re planning to come via your social channels. Tack on the hashtag #MySnapT and show off your own Snap-Ts (old or new). You can read about my own after the jump.

Oh, and there are a ton of cool, new Snap-T styles made with recycled wool, organic cotton, and 100% Traceable Down. More on those below as well. In the meantime, RSVP HERE.[Read more…]

“Swimming after dark.” Just writing it down sends my heart a-reelin’. With Labor Day signaling summer’s unofficial end, we have exactly two weeks left to frolic, to feel the heat and above all else, to swim outside all hours of the day.

I’ve had it in my head to throw a big pool party outside after sunset, the kind of pool party I used to lifeguard, the kind of pool party I used to deejay, the kind of pool party that might have gotten a little out of hand, but thanks to those taught-and-tanned, time-and-a-half, after-regular-business-hours overly responsible teenage lifeguards somehow always managed to stay just on this side of any real danger.

In preparation for a recent live reading of my high school diary at an event called Mortified, I came across a ton of old photos from the Guard Party at the city pool where I guarded when I was 18. I maintain that the summer of 1999 will remain forever the best summer of my life.

Hoping to wrangle some of that summer’s lingering charm, I put together a mix of music that I would want to listen to while racing on the slides, while judging a NesteaPlunge competition, while duking it out during the greased watermelon contest, and mainly while dousing myself with every last drop of a summer night humanly possible.

This is called Friday Night Feels. Whether or not you’ve ever been to the beach or to the pool after dark, I’m sure you’ll find something in the next two-and-a-half hours to help you hold onto the feeling of a funky, muggy, late-summer night.

When the road calls, set aside the GPS, pull out the Road Atlas, and take the long way home. These three mixes are comprised of the tunes I reached for this year when I felt compelled to exit The Interstate and examine my inner-state. And while, admittedly, my road map was not always within arm’s reach, I did find myself clicking the “Avoid Highways” button on my directional gadget, rolling down the windows, and turning up the volume knob. These are tunes for strolling and for rolling, not for reeling, nor for speeding. This is the Carefree Highway.

This all came about on an early autumn drive up the coast of Cape Cod. I was listening to a local radio station when Gordon Lightfoot’s “Carefree Highway” came on, and it was all kinds of things. It made the air smell familiar. It made my heart pang for the singer. All at once, it brought me back to high school and flung me forty years into the future. I’m not sure what it is about Gordon Lightfoot’s rock solid voice, his steady tone, his classic imagery, but I find his songs so immensely enjoyable. What follows is a mix of tunes for that mid-morning clip along your favorite road, grassy pastures to one side, coastal waters to the other.

Were the skies telling the truth, you’d be squinting past your wipers. But every once in a while the skies lie. One of my favorite times of day is when the late sun hangs low in front of me, rushing past patches of dark clouds, Westward-bound like a prophet. “It should’ve been raining hours ago,” you think to yourself breathing in the thick air of a nearly missed storm as you slam a fist on the side of the steering wheel, like a hard-driving drum beat underneath the melancholy vocals of a good sad song. Look up, take in that mix of dark and light, and croon with best of them.

Trip’s ending. The road grows narrow. Your surroundings become more and more familiar. Destination’s breath is in the air. You just want to get there. You’re not quite white-knuckling it, but the thrill of the ride is couching itself with the thrill of arrival. These tunes comprise my favorites from the last year of taking the unbeaten path. Treat them well, and they’ll be in your life forever. I find myself reaching for them, driving or not. I hope you will, too.

Before I considered devoting a week’s worth of posts to David Letterman, I intended to share this story. For some time, I have been fascinated by the evolution of Dave’s relationship with a personal hero of mine, Paul Newman. For the uninitiated, I wrote a lengthy piece a couple years ago about Mr. Newman, and I have for many years prior and since emulated Paul. I read anything I can to learn more about the man’s many efforts, I revisit his incredible film career, and by that virtue I model aspects of my pursuits after those of his.

During the Writer’s Strike of 1988, in order to kill time, Dave told the stories of his first pair of encounters with Paul. In the first part of the clip, he tells it on his own show. In the second part, you’ll also see him tell the story to Johnny Carson. There’s nothing particularly special about this story, but it hints at Dave’s adulation of Paul. Though Newman shrugs as he passes Letterman in the stands at an auto race, Letterman is starstruck. It’s clear from his multiple retellings of the story that, like me, he too holds the “persona of Paul Newman” as he put it in retellings, in high regard.

At some point in time after running into Paul Newman at a couple auto races, the two developed a friendship, one centered around a love for cars — fast, fast cars. In certain circles, Paul was known for disguising immensely powerful engines in rather diminuitive bodies, “cue cars” as they’re known in England. His Volkswagen stuffed with a 300 horsepower Ford engine is thestuffoflegend. In others, he was known as a champion race car driver. On the other hand, Dave is an Indiana boy thru-and-thru, and as co-owner of the Rahal Letterman Lanigan racing team, he is a fixture on the IndyCar circuit.

While Paul’s Volkswagen is inarguably cool, this is a post about my favorite of his cars, “The Paul Newman Volvo.” One day, seemingly out-of-the-blue, Paul called Dave, and asked if he wanted a specially built Volvo station wagon.

He retold his “Paul Newman Story” and introduced the world to the idea of the Paul Newman Volvo on Jon Stewart’s last-ever episode of his short-lived late night talk show. Then, helikely received a call from Paul, “Did you have to go and do that?” and revised the story, telling more of the car’s origin on Al Roker’sCNBC program, but he was careful not to name-drop, omitting any mention of Paul.

Without getting terribly personal, I’ve gone through some things this year that left me sideways, and this episode of Jerry Seinfeld’sComedians in Cars Getting Coffee[LINK] has been an immensely helpful bit of respite. I must have watched it a hundred times. If you watch no other clip in this post, take time to watch this one. It’s Dave — the Dave of present day — as unbuttoned as I can recall seeing him, and it’s just great. I love so many parts of this: the trip to the hardware store, the part where Dave asks Jerry with some seriousness, “are these people actors?” and the overall charming, humble, soft-spoken nature of their banter. Oh, and of course, I love the car, much as I love the men responsible for them.

Thank you, all of you, for humoring me as I relive some of my favorite moments from Dave Letterman’s splendid career. And thank you, Dave, for stirring the enthusiasm in a twelve-year-old boy, one who — for the past twenty-two years — has unfailingly heeded your advice: “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”

Like Letterman, Warren Zevon was an oft-misunderstood, feeling, thinking, snorting, spitting, mad man. Like Letterman, Zevon was born in the Midwest and found early success in Los Angeles. Like Letterman, Zevon threw it all out there.

Prior to a dive into his back catalog in college, I think I only owned Excitable Boy(likely thanks to you, dearly departed BMG Music Club), and I likely only listened to “Werewolves of London.” Fortunately, in the diving, I discovered an unheralded bard, classically trained by Igor Stravinsky and reared in the world of late 60s / early 70s Los Angeles (alongside contemporaries like Jackson Browne and David Geffen).

Around the time I was finishing up at school, Zevon announced he had cancer. I found myself in front of the television a few times over the course of the summer of 2003 where Zevon was showing up with greater regularity as he promoted a final album, a final tour, and a final round of performances on The Late Show.

Below, I’ve linked to all of Zevon’s known performances on Letterman-lead programs and the forty-five minute documentary focused on the recording of Zevon’s farewell album. Also, it’s worth checking out Enjoy Every Sandwich, a terrific Zevon tribute album.

[In 1990, he appeared to perform a cover of “Raspberry Beret,” which has been removed from all known sources for reasons obvious to those familiar with the author’s recent spate of actions to further protect his work.]